Batman on Broadway? Dark Knight Heads to the Stage

He’s conquered comic books, movies, televisions and even short-lived fad dance crazes, but can the Dark Knight really handle life on the stage? DC Entertainment, Warner Bros and Water Lane Productions have officially announced Batman Live, a touring live production that brings Batman face-to-face with, in the words of the press release, “a host of other Bat-characters, including Villains such as The Joker, The Riddler, Catwoman and The Penguin,” to open in the UK next year, before touring Europe and ending up on American shores by summer 2012, just in time to confuse audiences who getting excited for Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises. (More on Time.com:Top 10 Movies That Shouldn’t Have Made It to Broadway)

While DC’s Geoff Johns boasts “With the touring BATMAN LIVE show, we’re bringing Batman’s adventures to live audiences for the very first time,” this is far from the first time that superheroes have hit the stage: In addition to the seemingly cursed Spider-Man musicalTurn Off The Dark, Superman hit Broadway in 1966’s flopIt’s A Bird… It’s A Plane… It’s Superman, and a Captain America musical was announced (and entirely written) for a 1985 Broadway debut, but never produced. It’s possible that the more down-to-earth Batman may succeed where other heroes have failed, though; his world will need less unsafe stunts to translate onto the stage – Look, Ma! No stuntmen with broken wrists! – and he’s definitely got the brand name recognition to lure enough curious audiences in to make the opening performances profitable. Although producers have gone to great lengths to tell reporters that Batman Live is not a musical, I’m still hoping to see some of this on stage during the show: